Recycling markets rebound in Quad-Cities | Local news

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Even with the minimum of $ 36.73 per tonne received for the nine products on average in September 2019, that amount was still more profitable than landfill, Morris said.

“We kept the materials out of the landfill, we got the highest possible value, we allowed everyone to work, we made the most of a bad situation. “

Regarding the impact of single-stream recycling – the current model in which all Quad-Cities household recyclables go into a single bin without sorting – the overall volume of products supported is 60% higher than before Morris said. Before the start of the single flow in 2016, the center received around 7,000 tonnes of products per year. To make the new recycling center and single stream sustainable, it needed more volume. So he got 14,500 tons per year from the Illinois Quad-City communities. During the first five years, the total tonnage increased to 40,000 tonnes per year.

Scott Center works with ISU and NATO on rare earth metals

Additional high-value recycling could be on the horizon for the Scott Area Recycling Center, Davenport.

Students at a business incubator lab at Iowa State University, Ames, are working on a method to recover rare earth metals from electronics using thermal, mechanical, and chemical means, and they discussed with recycling center staff the possibility of being a source of electronics.

Rare earth metals are used in military and intelligence equipment, but they are currently only mined in China and Afghanistan, meaning the United States and its NATO allies have no control over them, said Kathy Morris, director of the Scott County Waste Commission, which operates the center.

This poses a national security risk, which is why scientists such as those in the state of Iowa are working on ways to recover metals from existing elements. Examples are neodymium, present in almost all electronic devices and necessary for the operation of touch screens, and dysporosium, used in electronics such as electric motors, generators and sonars.

Knowing that Scott County has a robust recycling center that could be a source of raw material, the students came to visit the center in late August.

And in October, Bryce Stalcup, recycling operations manager, and Omar Ahmad, electronics reuse supervisor, traveled to Virginia to present, with the State of Iowa, to a conference group of the NATO. The next step is to try and expand the program from a little lab effort to something that would provide enough material to be worth it.